Re: Professional Groups

[Ron DuFresne <dufresne () winternet com>]

the "buy american" ideal/ordeal<?> was a thing of the 70's <1970's>, and
most likely fails in a situation whence wal mart is making busloads of
cash, in a weak economy,pushing products for the most part mace in china.

Thanks.,

Ron DuFresne

On Mon, 12 Jan 2004, Matt Burnett wrote:

> Forgot to include this in my previous post. I am personally wondering if
> thoses tech jobs going overseas will come back.  Im not sure if it has been
> discussed on this list, but what about the quality of the software written
> overseas? We all know that American made software typically has a few
> security issues, but what of software made overseas? Are we going to see
> exploits come out on a obsecene basis. Could this result in jobs coming back
> to the US? Also we have seen a few jobs come back, take Dell's Enterprise
> Tech Support as a example, tons of people with money complained to Dell and
> now we have a few more jobs back. What if we all started to complain about
> the quality of products (even if there isn't a problem), and threaten to
> switch vendors?
>
> On 1/12/04 2:31 PM, "Daniel Sichel" <daniels () Ponderosatel com> wrote:
>
> > > It's time we as a professional group start talking and walking like
> > > adults (at least more than in the past), I think. Just playing with
> > > computers is fine, but not enough.
> >
> > > Agreed.  And believe me, I have spent many an hour trying to figure out
> >
> > > how to approach the problem.  Unfortunately, every solution I can come
> > > up with involves educating the masses . . . many of whom don't want to
> > > be confused with facts . . .  ;>
> >
> > This is off topic but I couldn't help myself. What we need is a union.
> > Why? Well right now, management generally buys the software that has the
> > cutest infobabes, the best promise, or safe branding (Microsoft). If we
> > had a union that negotiated a contract that paid us extra for fixing
> > software failures or broken installs, so that the bottom line got hurt
> > by the crap these people sell, it would take about 5 minutes for the
> > priorities to change in purchasing decisions and for SLAs and tech
> > support to be ratcheted up where they belong.
> >
> > Speaking as a US citizen, if we were Teamsters and honored their picket
> > lines think of the leverage we would have. Scab truck drivers are
> > available, but imagine the chaos of scab sys admins or firewall
> > administrators? And of course when the Teamsters honor our picket lines,
> > that wouldn't hurt a bit.
> >
> > Be nice to keep our jobs from going to third world countries where tech
> > professionals are even more exploited than here.
> >
> > But of course, all my technical professional colleagues will pooh-pooh
> > the idea of a union. They always do. Think about this, a union for us
> > could be like the bar associatio for lawyers or the AMA for doctors. We
> > could impose stringent professional abilities, certifications, and
> > requirements to ensure we are a professional, capable body of people. We
> > could institute apprenticeships so we have  a supply of people who are
> > more than paper MCSEs or CCNAs.
> >
> > I am very fortunate that I work in an enlightened company that pays more
> > than lip service to standards and security. Management totally backs us
> > up on secure and safe computing. No IM, no HTML mail, no user installed
> > software. A budget for security and training. It is wonderfule.  It is
> > also the first employer in my 15 years of IT experience that follows
> > through on these things. But I remember the pain and anguish from
> > before. If we are going to change our industry so that we can succeed at
> > our jobs, we need a union. Period.
> >
> >
> > Dan Sichel, Network Engineer
> > Ponderosa Telephone Company
> > (559) 868-6367
> >
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